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Everybody Has a Worldview: Worldview Series (Part 2)

(A wise man once said) When we’ve chosen to take a different path, we must be prepared to do things differently, and be willing to come into conflict with those who would have us do otherwise.

Think about this. What happens when you decide to do something different? Do people encourage you? Not really. Some may be challenged by your choice while others may actually be threatened by it, but few will applaud it.

The path that you’ve taken as a home educator is a decision to do something different and with that comes the challenges and conflicts of those who would prefer that you do like everybody else.

What is it that makes people react, sometimes violently when someone challenges their position on a matter? To answer that question we need to consider the root cause or foundational premise that directs the actions of people. That brings us to the importance of world view.

World view is defined as what is unquestionably assumed to be true, about oneself, and the world around us. (repeat)

The whole idea of world view actually is the world’s replacement for a word that the “worldly” don’t like to use and that word is “faith.”

So, instead of asking what faith do you belong to, we sort of make it more generic and downplay its meaning, I guess, by saying it is a world view rather than a faith.

Faith is defined as a strongly held belief or theory and world view as what is unquestionably assumed to be true about oneself and the world around us.

There is not much difference in those two definitions and we can see that they are connected as faith is the foundation of world view. Quite frankly, they are the same because both are established on our perception of God.

Everybody has a world view or faith foundation. One of the greatest tricks of the world is to say, “I’m not religious.” I have never, in my entire life, met a person who wasn’t religious, for the simple reason that there is not a person on earth that does not have a world view or faith system.

If you’ve lived, you’ve experienced things, you’ve heard things, you’ve been told things, you’ve read things, everything that you’ve been exposed to has been part of what formulated your world view.

Whether right or wrong, true or false, reality or otherwise, everyone has a world view based on all our personal experiences, whether we are aware of it or not.

Some people can actually point at it and give it a name. Other people don’t know that they have one but indeed they do and it’s based on our perception of God.

Now, speaking of education, how many people have actually been home educated? Very few, I venture to guess. Most of us are actually doing something that we have never experienced ourselves as students.

It’s like telling our children to do something that we’ve never done. A bit of a challenge, to be sure as it must begin with our correcting the errors in our worldview.

So really, when we stop to think of it, what do you think is going to happen when someone starts talking to you as a home educator and asks, what experience have you had with education?

Nearly all of us have been to school. So what do we bring with us? What’s our world view in regards to education? It is probably what we’ve experienced which is, school.

So what do 99.9 percent of the people do when they first start home educating? Bring the school home, because that’s all we’ve experienced, that’s our world view. We’re comfortable there, because that’s what we’ve come to believe is true.

I want to challenge your world view as it relates to education. It’s important, because your world view becomes the foundation of every decision that you’re ever going to make in your life, including all the decisions you will make regarding the education of your children.

It’s important because you want to make the best decisions and your making that decision is going to be based upon what you believe to be true.

I find it’s almost impossible for me to start any session on any topic without first talking about world view. It is that important. Debates that we may have, usually boil down to an expression of faith or our strongly held belief or theory in a matter.

Where are we placing our faith? Where is our world view? Since our world view and faith is the foundation for our intellectual and spiritual being, it becomes the bias.

As a matter of fact, you can see this throughout the world. The Jewish people believe that their world view is the correct one, everyone else falls under the category of gentile. The Muslim people figure that their world view is the correct one and everyone else falls under the category of infidel.

The Christian world view also believes that it’s the right one (and I happen to believe that it actually is the right one) and everyone else falls in the “other category” we refer to generally as unbelievers. All these are faith categories and therefore, all are world views.

So, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim or any other religion, all world views really have two perspectives; one in keeping with what one believes and another which is what everybody else believes or anything that does not agree with what we believe. This creates an environment of us versus them.

If you think about this, it is the reason for every war that has ever been fought. Both sides see the other side as “the other guys” who don’t but should believe as they do and they are willing to fight over it, whether with words or with actions.